The Trouble With Cowboys (8 page)

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Authors: Melissa Cutler

Tags: #General, #Fiction

BOOK: The Trouble With Cowboys
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Amy blinked at the screen, her stomach churning.
Jenna finished reading the passage. “‘Prepared by nationally renowned chef and
Ultimate Chef Showdown
contestant, Amy Sorentino.’”
Amy pressed a finger to her temple. “I hate that I’ll never live down my appearance on that show.”
“I know, sweetie, but the sort of publicity we will get from advertising your performance on
Chef Showdown
might be the key to Heritage Farm’s success. We have to play that card.”
“It was the worst experience of my life.”
“Okay, true. But this is our farm I’m talking about. This”—she speared a finger toward the computer screen—“is our last chance to avoid foreclosure, pay for Mom’s care, and keep a roof over all our heads. The producers from the Travel Channel will be arriving in January to film a piece that’ll air around Valentine’s Day. That’s huge. Beyond huge. We have to do everything possible to promote the business.”
“You’re right. I’m still making my peace with what happened on the show, but I’ll be okay.” She rose and eased the ravioli into the water, then adjusted the heat.
We have to keep moving forward.
Easier said than done.
“Have you gotten any nibbles on the job listing you posted?” Jenna asked.
“Not one.” She’d placed ads online and in community newspapers across the state two weeks earlier, looking for a qualified sous-chef. “Hard to believe no one’s jumping at the chance to work in a start-up restaurant that’s hours away from the nearest big city, working under a failed reality show chef for a pittance.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’ll work out. You’ll see. With the way the economy’s been plummeting the past few years, someone’s bound to need a job. And once they’re here, they’ll sense how successful this little start-up restaurant’s going to be.”
The skeptic in Amy rejected Jenna’s optimistic prediction, but even still, in her heart, she hoped Jenna was right—for all of their sakes. “How about, after you sample the ravioli, I’ll get you up to speed on the beef supply contract? Maybe you can call Slipping Rock’s office tomorrow morning and set up an appointment.”
“I believe you have a date on Friday night with Slipping Rock’s owner. You can talk to him about a contract yourself.”
“No way. You have to handle it, Jenna. I can’t be responsible for negotiating a business contract with Kellan. I’m a terrible judge of character—especially when it comes to cowboys. Look at the way he coerced me into going out with him. One kiss and I lost control. If I tried to bargain with him over beef prices, I’d probably bankrupt our business.”
“Not all cowboys are bad news, you know.”
Tucking a slotted spoon under her arm, Amy opened the fridge. “Wanna make a bet? You watched what happened on
Chef Showdown,
right?”
“I did. It sucked. Brock McKenna was a jerk.”
Amy snorted as she rummaged for something to dice, finding a bag of celery, cabbage, and garlic she hadn’t remembered buying. “
Jerk
is too nice an insult. That no-good, lying, cheating, rotten bastard tops the list of reasons I hate cowboys. But it’s not only him. We can add Dad and every boyfriend I had in high school to that list. And every boyfriend you ever had. And pretty much every other cowboy I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.”
“Then why do you keep sleeping with them?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” She kicked the fridge door closed and slammed a bunch of celery on the counter. “Look, sis. I get how ridiculous an obsession it is. There’s just something about cowboys. I can’t explain it.”
Grabbing a plate, she fished the tender ravioli out of the water with the slotted spoon, drizzled sage cream sauce over them, and set the plate under Jenna’s nose. As Jenna dug in, moaning with bliss, Amy took her MAC knife in hand and got busy dicing, hoping to forget her problems for a while.
Too bad her thoughts kept slipping to Kellan’s kiss that morning. Damn him. She couldn’t even dice in peace since he had swaggered into her life. She dumped handfuls of diced celery into a bowl, frowning. Friday night, when he arrived to pick her up for the date he insisted on, a date she’d never agreed to, she’d have to find the guts to ask him to leave her alone. How hard could it be?
She grabbed a second bunch of celery from the fridge. Okay, time to be honest with herself. Telling Kellan to go away was bound to be near impossible, especially if he showed up in a truck, wearing that Stetson. She rolled her tongue over her bottom lip at the memory, felt a telltale rush of blood to her inner thighs, and picked the MAC up again, moving the knife over the cutting board with reckless speed.
Maybe she should make an exception to rule number one. Maybe she needed to give herself permission to satisfy her ridiculous desires with one more roll in the hay with the hottest cowboy she’d ever laid eyes on before sending him packing. It was a moral compromise that might work, but only if she kept her emotional boundaries in place. Because Amy’s real problem wasn’t so much about getting horizontal with cowboys, but her penchant for falling in love with them . . . and her heart had the scars to prove it.
Chapter 5
The clock was nearing midnight as Kellan approached the Texas state line en route to Amarillo. The deteriorating, neon-signed motels and trinket shops of Old Route 66 took on an aura of eerie vacancy in the shadowy darkness, like a ghost town from one of those low-budget horror movies Chris and Lisa were fond of. This was where the pretty young actress’s car would break down, or where zombies would strike unsuspecting tourists.
The real-life demon lurking among the shabby buildings was the march of time, which is why Kellan hated this drive, always had. Nothing spelled defeat in his mind more than the route’s crumbling businesses, with their desperate bid for survival by evoking nostalgia in an era when no one cared to look back. It was depressing as hell.
His truck was ushered into Texas by a gusty night wind that swirled and whipped the snow over the dull, dark landscape of endless flat plains. He reached across the center console to the passenger seat and ran his hand over the Sorentino file.
Thinking of Amy left him feeling dizzy, detached. Like he’d been dropped headfirst down a well. He’d proclaimed to everyone, from his friends and Rachel to Amy herself, that all he wanted was casual sex. But nothing about his attraction to her was casual. Not remotely.
One look at Amy at church and a ravenous, incendiary hunger replaced his every rational thought. One look and he’d wanted to drag her away and ravish her. He wanted to pleasure her with his tongue and fingers and cock until she was hoarse from screaming his name. Nothing casual about that.
So he’d kissed her after the service. Crushing her against the church office wall, he’d taken her mouth as he’d fantasized about for the previous hour straight.
That kiss scared the shit out of him.
Not because of his loss of control, as disconcerting as that was for a man who prided himself on maintaining careful command of his life, but because the moment their lips met, a deeper knowledge had overwhelmed his lust. Hope. Ridiculous, irrational hope that maybe, despite his aversion to drama and dysfunctional families, he and Amy might have a future together beyond their lust.
What a crock that hope had been. He wasn’t at liberty to have a relationship, sexual or otherwise, with a defendant in a lawsuit by the company he was set to inherit. And if that wasn’t frustrating enough, the minute Amy learned of Kellan’s Amarex connection, she was going to hate him. He might be able to handle the sticky ethical issues, but he didn’t have it in him to handle Amy’s hatred.
He’d pored over her family’s file that night after his friends left, studying the leasing contract between Gerald Sorentino and the oil company, analyzing photographs of expedition drilling sites all over their acreage, and parsing out the data of the expedition results until he’d memorized it. What he discovered chilled him to the bone.
Amarex was preparing to bankrupt Amy’s family in order to buy their land. Of course, the legal jargon didn’t phrase matters quite so bluntly, but it was all there in the oil leasing contract Gerald Sorentino signed. A clause stating that in the event of a foreclosure, Amarex had the opportunity to purchase every square inch of the Sorentino family’s three thousand acres at a fraction of the market value. The fastest way to induce foreclosure was to drain the family’s already meager coffers with a costly lawsuit.
What Morton wanted with the Sorentinos’ oil-free, seemingly useless plot of land was anyone’s guess. Sadistic as he was, perhaps the land itself didn’t matter except as a means to provoke Kellan, as he was so fond of doing. No matter the reason, Kellan had two ways out of the situation. Either he could convince Morton to drop the lawsuit and void the oil leasing contract, or he could involve the law.
He fingered the digital recorder in his jacket pocket. Plan B. Involving the law didn’t sit well with him because it would thrust him into the public eye along with his family’s dirt. He had to try for Plan A, which was why he’d forfeited sleep and driven through a snowstorm to Morton’s Amarillo estate.
The driveway of Morton’s gated compound began twenty miles west of Amarillo and snaked through miles of desolate desert before ending at a brick wall fitted with a wrought-iron entrance gate. Instead of buzzing the intercom, he dialed Morton’s number on his cell phone.
“Kellan, my boy, are you phoning to tell me you’ve convinced the Sorentino family to sell?” Morton sounded fresh and alert, despite the late hour. The security cameras would’ve shown him at the gate, so Kellan didn’t get why Morton was putting on the ignorant act.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Buzz me through.”
The silence on the other end of the phone was weighted. He could see, in his mind, Morton’s smug, sinister smile. “Certainly. What an intriguing surprise.”
My ass.
The gate retracted. Kellan ended the call and eased off the brakes. On the winding quarter-mile drive to the main house, Kellan reviewed his strategy. The worst mistake he could make tonight would be to let slip any clue of his personal relationship with Amy. If Morton got a whiff of Kellan’s feelings, there was no doubt in his mind he’d redouble his efforts to destroy the Sorentinos, if only because it would torture Kellan.
He crested the final hill to see Morton’s southwest-style, sprawling single-story estate shrouded in darkness, save for the faint glow of light from behind a thickly curtained window. The yard’s desert landscape seemed to cower beneath a dusting of fresh snow. The moment Kellan’s truck hit the cement pavers of the circular drive, four glaring floodlights clicked on.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pressed
RECORD
. The tape would be uploaded to his computer, as had his every conversation with Morton for the past ten years. Regardless of whether he ever made use of them, it felt good—powerful—to have an ace up his sleeve. Hunkering into his jacket, he crunched over the pavers while wind and snow slapped at his body. One of the double doors opened, silhouetting Morton’s stocky frame and buzz-cut hair.
Morton squinted at the sky. “Looks like it’s going to be a wild one tonight. Helluva storm brewing on the plains.” He gave the door a push and backed off so Kellan could pass through. “I’ve been expecting you.”
An approaching rumble of dogs barking—either with excitement or menace, Kellan could never decide—greeted his arrival. With one decisive whistle, Morton commanded three huge, muscular brown dogs to heel a few feet behind him. The dogs sat, but protested with a string of low growls, their beady eyes locked on Kellan.
Morton rubbed a hand over the nearest dog’s head. It continued to growl, its gums dripping with saliva. “Has the snow reached Quay County yet?”
Kellan shoved past the dogs, each of whom probably weighed almost as much as he did, and moved farther into a Spanish-tiled entrance hall. The house was cool, cold even, and smelled of cigars, furniture oil, and the residual odor of a long-ago fire in the hearth. “Blew in a couple hours ago. The forecast said the real weather’ll pick up around three.”
“I heard tell of three or four inches of snow by the time the storm front moves on. We might even have ourselves a white Christmas.”
Ironic that Morton would mention Christmas because, although December 25 was less than three weeks away, not a single decoration adorned his sprawling estate. Kellan felt the absence of a woman’s touch as much as he’d felt it in his own house before he’d thrown a huge decorating budget at Lisa and granted her free reign to fix the problem. Morton’s house hadn’t always been so inhospitable. His wife, Eileen, had managed to make the place downright cheery until the day she disappeared.
Kellan followed the clink of Morton’s black boots through the hall to his office. The dogs jostled Kellan in their push to catch up with their master. Whereas the rest of the house smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke, Morton’s office reeked of it. A collection of stubbed-out stogies crowded a metal ashtray atop a desk the size of a Ping-Pong table. One continued to send a tendril of smoke into the air. Lining the walls were bookshelves weighted with leather-bound volumes of oil and mineral rights laws interspersed with framed photos of Morton’s dogs. Not only the three presently sprawled on the carpet, but every dog that had been lucky enough to call him its owner.
“How many of those mutts are you up to now?” Kellan couldn’t help but ask.
Morton gestured for him to sit in a stiff-looking chair before sloshing caramel-colored liquor into two lowball glasses. “You ought to take more care with your vocabulary, son. These
mutts
are
Dogue de Bordeaux
purebreds. They’re worth a helluva lot more than your prized steers, that’s for damn sure.”
Not even a fancy French name could soften the fact that these were mastiffs, bred for bulk and strength, with jaws that could rip a man’s arm off in a heartbeat should they be so inclined. He nudged one’s hind leg with his boot. It whipped its head up and growled a warning. “Still, what’s the count? Fifteen? Twenty? Can you even tell them apart anymore? They all look the same to me.”
Morton huffed and offered Kellan a glass before perching on the edge of his desk.
Kellan sniffed the drink. Bourbon. Probably the good stuff, knowing his uncle. Rubbing his nostrils against the fumes of alcohol still tingling there, he set the drink on the nearest table.
With his legs crossed at the ankles, Morton regarded Kellan over the lip of the glass as he sipped his drink. “It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning, so let’s get right to business. What can I do for you?”
Kellan folded his hands over his chest, faking the same kind of confidence he utilized when negotiating steer prices. “My property, Slipping Rock Ranch, what year did you purchase it?” Kellan knew the answer, but dates and facts seemed like an easy place to start.
Morton scratched his head. “Round about 1985. The spring of that year, I believe.”
“Why? What interested you in the land?”
“That’s a stupid question from an otherwise smart man. Oil, of course.”
“It’s not enough for you to pull a salary and bonuses through the company, is it? Any oil-rich land you personally acquire reaps exponentially more cash because the profits land straight in your bank account. Is that right?”
“That’s how entrepreneurship works. Doesn’t make it criminal, if that’s what you’re implying. Every property I invest in brings me huge gains when the gamble pays off. It doesn’t always, but it’s a risk worth taking.”
“Then it’s fair to assume you’ve gambled on other properties over the years and achieved better results than the Slipping Rock acreage?”
Morton tossed back the remainder of his drink and walked to the decanter for a refill. “Damn right. A man doesn’t become as successful as I have without diversifying.”
“At the expense of home owners.”
Morton inclined his head, but didn’t answer. He sloshed a finger of liquor into his glass.
“Back to Quay County,” Kellan said. “After the Amarex exploration crew determined there was no oil to be had under the property that would become Slipping Rock Ranch, you abandoned it. Until I came along.”
Morton resumed his perch on the edge of the desk. “Why are we rehashing this?”
“Just making sure I understand everything clearly. So you didn’t have any idea before the exploration crew did their thing that my property was dry?”
“Like I said. All the land surrounding it was saturated with pockets of crude oil. It was a fair assumption I’d find oil under that dirt too.”
Kellan took a sip and pushed the bourbon around the roof of his mouth with his tongue. “Not all the surrounding land, as it turned out.”
Morton chortled. “Well, here we are, then. The real reason for your house call. You want to talk about the Sorentino property. Go ahead and talk.”
“Their land is as dry as mine.”
“So the exploration crew declared, yes.”
“According to the documentation I read, three separate exploration crews have scoured the lot over the last twenty years. Found nothing but dirt and rock every time.”
“As we’ve already covered, the oil business involves a bit of gambling and a hefty dose of intuition. Sometimes, that intuition is wrong.”
Kellan rose. Containing his frustration was becoming more difficult by the minute. Already, his hands quivered and he detected a telltale strain in his voice. Sidestepping the dogs and the desk, he walked with a measured stride to the bookshelves and ran his hands over the smooth, leather bindings of the law books. He was struck by their benign, impotent presence in the room. Struck by the absurd notion that the rules governing people’s lives could be harnessed thusly—stripped of humanity, organized, bound, and left on shelves to collect dust.
He picked absentmindedly at a fraying corner of leather. “Why is Amarex fighting so hard to purchase a dry piece of property?”
“It’s none of your concern.”
“None of my concern?” He turned and looked Morton full in the face. “You made it my concern the night you had a courier deliver the file to my house. Why did you do that, if you didn’t want me sticking my nose in your business?”
Morton took a long sip of bourbon, his gaze steady on Kellan. “I have my reasons.”

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